President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are to meet face to face on Monday after a weekend of on again, off again negotiations over raising the nation’s debt ceiling
President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet face to face Monday after a weekend of on again, off again negotiations over raising the nation’s debt ceiling and mere days before the government could reach a “hard deadline” and run out of cash to pay its bills.
The two sides are working to reach a budget compromise before June 1, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the country could default.
McCarthy and Republicans are insisting on spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit. Biden has come to the negotiating table after balking for months but says the GOP lawmakers will have to back off their “extreme positions.”
On Sunday evening, negotiators met again and appeared to be narrowing on a 2024 budget year cap that could resolve the standoff. After speaking with Biden by phone as the president traveled home from a trip to Asia, McCarthy sounded somewhat optimistic. But he warned that « there’s no agreement on anything.”
A look at the negotiations and why they are happening:
WHAT IS THE DEBT CEILING FIGHT ALL ABOUT?
Once a routine act by Congress, the vote to raise the debt ceiling allows the Treasury Department to continue borrowing money to pay the nation’s already incurred bills.
The vote in more recent times has been used as a political leverage point, a must-pass bill that can be loaded up with other priorities.
House Republicans, newly empowered in the majority this Congress, are refusing to raise the debt limit unless Biden and the Democrats impose federal spending cuts and restrictions on future spending.
The Republicans say the nation’s debt, now at $31 trillion, is unsustainable. They also want to attach other priorities, including stiffer work requirements on recipients of government cash aid, food stamps and the Medicaid health care program. Many Democrats oppose those requirements.
Biden had insisted on approving the debt ceiling with no strings attached, saying the U.
